Return to Normal

I am happy to tell you all that the nausea is gone!  I was slowly having more good days than bad days, then one Monday morning (November 12th, 15 weeks prego) I woke up and felt amazing, no queasiness, no yellow bowl right by my side, no nausea bracelets, no prego pops, no zofran... it was definitely a strange feeling.  I had heard of people's nausea suddenly disappearing, but with Christine it was a slow and long, drawn-out process so I was expecting the same again. Given the choice, I would definitely choose the "here one day, gone the next" option.

Jeff took this picture about a month ago. At the time I was thinking, "SERIOUSLY Jeff? You are taking pictures right now? I am dying here. Put away that camera and go get a knife so you can remove all my internal organs." But now, I am grateful that Jeff captured this sweet moment.  Every time I threw up, Christine would tell Jeff "Mommy sick" and she would rush to my side bringing me my comfort items like watermelon sour patch candies, preggo pops, and lemon water. Then she would read me stories.

Man, I am sooooooo glad those miserable three months are over. Lucky for pregnancy brain I am already forgetting it all. Speaking of pregnancy brain, it is BAD! I forgot how bad it is! A few days ago Jeff dropped me off at Hobby Lobby while he got his hair cut across the street. I buckled Christine into the cart and walked down a couple aisles and tried to remember what I was planning to buy. I couldn't come up with a single thing. I had to call Jeff. "Hi honey.... uh do you remember what I wanted to get at the store?" If I remember right, I won't get my old brain back until this baby is 6 months old.

Christine pulled this basked out from under her crib, removed the blankets it was holding, dragged it to the living room and put in a pillow from the couch. Ha ha! She loves to pretend to read the Anne books. I read the entire series while I was sick. (I also watched all 6 seasons of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix and rewatched all 3 seasons of Modern Family- luckily morning sickness gave me the excuse to buy the 3rd season)

The second day of being nausea free, I celebrated by making homemade bread sticks and spaghetti (I used this recipe for Olive Garden bread sticks- yum!). It was the first meal I had cooked in three months. I am sure that Jeff is excited to finally be off kitchen duty.

I am excited to be back! It really feels like I was in a coma for the last three months. As I have been cleaning up around the house I have been doing things like wiping my dry-erase calendar that had notes and plans for August, take down menu plans off the fridge from August, change the date on my calendar blocks from September to December (at least I updated my calendar once in September). Put away sewing projects I was in the middle of when I got sick. (for those of you following my sewing adventures, I was in the middle of designing a Princess Kate Burberry Coat knock-off for Project Run and Play. I was soooo close to finishing it too, I just had to sew on the belt loops!) It feels soooo strange to pick up all the pieces of my old life.

I know a lot of you will want to know, have the contractions started? Yes, they have. They started about this time for Christine too. Right now they are small and not very painful, and very infrequent. I have a new OB this time, and he is MUCH better than my old one, and he has a completely different philosophy on my "irritable uterus" so I don't think he will put me on bed rest this round. (crossing my fingers!!)

Trunk or Treat

For Halloween this year our costumes were inspired by one of Christine's favorite books, Fancy Nancy. When we went to the ward Trunk or Treat on Saturday, we were surprised by how many people had never heard of Fancy Nancy.

Fancy Nancy is a girl who loves to dress up. Her favorite color is fuchsia (that's a fancy way of saying purple she says). She teaches her family how to be fancy.

 So Fancy Nancy helps her mom and dad dress up

 Then they all go out for dinner at the King's Crown

Nancy says: "When we arrive at the King's Crown, everyone looks up. They probably think we're movie stars."

Everyone looked up to see US, and thought we were movie stars too! Actually they thought Christine was a princess fairy, and that Jeff and I were 20s flappers.

 We had planned to do ballet ribbons on Christine's legs like in the book, but it was freezing here in Texas (the freezing point in Texas is below 72 degrees) so we had to put pants on her instead.

For our ward trunk or treat, the Primary wanted to do a few carnival games. We did a balance beam through a web of spiders. Some little kids were terrified of the spiders, others tried to stuff them in their trick or treat bags. Overall it was an easy game to put together and was a huge success. 

I made Christine's trick or treat bag the night before. I felt bad that I didn't make our costumes this year, so at least I had a cute bag for Christine to put her candy in. She loves to haul it around the house and peak in to look at all her candy.

This year Christine really "got" Halloween, and made everything so much fun.  Christine helped me put out the Halloween decorations around the house and loved all the pumpkins. Every day she would point out all the pumpkins and say "pumpkin! pumpkin!" and we would sing the song from Nightmare Before Christmas "This is Halloween, This is Halloween!" I just wish I wasn't sick so we could have done more things, like carve pumpkins and make pumpkin roll.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone else's costumes!

What have we been up to?

Well that's a pretty easy question.  Nausea, Nausea, and more Nausea.  But there are signs that it may be remitting (knock on wood).  By signs I mean that Angela made it 3 hours today without having to be  lying still with her head in a bowl. We'll take it though.

So what have Christine and I been up to with Angela out of commission-- well we play a lot of doll house (a Little People doll house with a Little People barn).  Fortunate for Christine I'm teaching her to play doll house like a boy, action-adventure style!

Dora and Christine-Doll

First, we are against gender stereotyping our dolls; we are also against species discrimination and discrimination of a doll because it may be height advantaged or disadvantaged (like Dora and Christine-Doll who are the right height for the dollhouse but don't quite fit into the little people furniture) This may be due to the fact that for a while we only had a few properly sized figurines for the doll house and they consisted of a farmer and his farm animals.  Thus we had the animals playing all the roles a normal human doll might be better suited to play. When Nana sent us a new Little People airplane which came with properly sized tourists and flight attendants, Christine fired the tourists and flight attendants on the spot. As an equal-opportunity employing agency, we were proud to hire on a sheep and a pig to be captain and copilot.  Sophie the giraffe was hired as the stewardess.  However, due to her disproportionate size (she takes up the entire cabin) she must enter into through the roof, and the pig and sheep must not fly too rambunctiously because Sophie is top heavy and will fall out.

The usual adventure goes like this.  Dora builds a Lego bridge (The big size lego blocks that are easy to put together but also fall apart very easily) from the roof of the barn to the roof of the house.  Dora is kind of a show-off and runs across the bridge, but when she gets to house roof, the bridge has inevitably collapsed.  Christine then shouts, "Uh-oh Dora roof again!" This is a signal for the rescue team to fly in.  Sheep, Christine-doll, and Sophie are dispatched and the airplane flies to get Dora off the  roof.  The airplane has a special hover feature that allows it to hover over the roof so Dora can climb in.  

Occasionally the airplane is out of commission so we must build a Lego tower.  On a recent adventure, a huge Hello-kitty doll was dispatched to the scene and used her huge pink, beach bucket to climb up to the roof.  

Lately though Christine has wanted in on the action and will attempt to climb the bridge or tower on to the roof herself.  Realizing the instability of the dollhouse, she simply places her foot on the roof, "Uh-oh Christine roof again!"  The adventure team never backs down from a challenge though, sheep was able to successfully lower Christine's foot off of the two-story doll house.

Other doll house innovations have been a lego swimming pool (complete with diving-board and slide) that turns into an elevator complete with a "computer room" compartment for pig, sheep, and Christine-doll to "play the ipad" in.

Over the last few weeks Christine has shown us how sweet and good-natured she is.  There have been a few times that I have had to leave my poor wife by herself.  When she has needed to run into the bathroom, little Christine follows in-toe bringing her her lemon water, her prego pops, and other things she thinks mommy might need.  It is so sweet how fast she has picked up on this.  We have not directly taught her any of these things, but she is quick to say, "Mommy sick. Need medicine."  She will always run in and give her Mommy a hug and prays for her every night.  We truly have the sweetest little girl.  We love her so much.  I only hope this next one will be just like her.

One other memory we want to remember from this time stems from the Little Critter book "The New Baby." Christine loves little critter, and in this book Little Critter's mom brings home the new baby. Little Critter doesn't know what to do with a new baby, he tries to show the baby his games and toys but the baby ignores him, he even tells the baby his best joke. For some reason, Christine fixated on that idea. "Tell joke!" and even made up her own joke. I had just put her in her crib for the night and she asked for some water as she does every night. She names the type of water she drinks by what cup it is in, "pink water" or "Egg water" (an Easter egg cup) or "hello kitty water" and that night when I brought her some "pink water" Christine says "HOT DOG WATER! ha ha ha ha!" she was laughing her head off at her funny joke. So now whenever we are talking about the new baby Christine always says "Christine tell new baby joke. Hot dog water! ha ha ha!" She's no Jim Gaffigan but she's on her way.

Update on doctor's appointment

We went to the doctor's yesterday and got to see our baby! and she's doing great (we are calling her a she until we find out otherwise).  I admit, I was really nervous going in. I hadn't really let myself hope that we were having a baby. I learned the hard way that being pregnant doesn't necessarily mean you are going to have a baby in nine months. It was such a relief to see the little bean on the ultrasound and see it's little heart cells flashing, and then to hear the heart beat. I know that there is still a chance things won't work out, but I'm letting myself hope.

Luckily Jeff is doing research this month and is working from home. He has a very flexible schedule and so was able to come with me to the appointment and help with Christine. Christine was so excited to see the "new baby." I loved how she held the ultrasound pictures with such care and pointed to the pictures telling me, "new baby new baby"! and then "show Gigi! show Gigi!" haha

Now what everyone wants to know, I am 7 weeks. Due May 8th. It seems forever away.

Did you know that you can vomit so violently that the blood vessels under your eyes pop? Weird huh? When covered with make up it just looks like I got 50 new freckles under my eyes. They should disappear soon though.

Today

Anybody remember how sick I got when I was pregnant with Christine? Well being so crazy nauseated makes it really hard trying to hide being pregnant. Today at church, mid-conversation with someone I had to run to the bathroom to throw-up. Afterwards I was in pretty bad shape and had to leave. I think about twenty people witnessed my odd behavior and were swarming Jeff asking if I was okay. What can you do but tell them that we are pregnant? Since such a large amount of people know I guess it's time to tell everyone, I am pregnant.

I'm not very far along. Maybe 8 weeks? I go into the doctor tomorrow and he'll be able to measure the baby and determine how far along I am. I hesitate to tell people so early because we had a miscarriage a few months ago. But I can't hide the nausea and I don't want anybody to worry that I am dying, or wonder why I haven't posted on the blog, or think that I hate playgroup because I quit going. And I'm a little tired of talking to people and having them ask me what I have been up to during the week and have to make stuff up. Because the truth is I have been curled up in a ball on the bathroom rug in front of the toilet. all. week. long.

Luckily my doctor called in a prescription of Zofran to help with the nausea, and it helps a lot. But I'm still throwing up.

I know you are all wondering about pregnancy cravings. I get serious cravings when I am pregnant. Jeff and I knew that we were pregnant before taking a pregnancy test because I had been tired all week and one day after a long nap in the middle of the day I woke up with a crazy craving for chocolate covered graham crackers and sour cream and onion chips with Lays Dip. We had to run to the store immediately and get them, and I started eating them in the car because I couldn't wait any longer. They were the BEST THING I had EVER eaten.

After taking Christine to her 2 year check-up I was driving home and NEEDED a Burger King hamburger and french fries. The thing with cravings is that they haunt me. I get this thought of a certain food and I cannot stop thinking about it until I get it. When I was pregnant with Christine, Jeff had to endure two weeks of me talking about Winger's Sticky Finger Chicken Salad (something I ate maybe twice in my life, but there are no Wingers in Houston). Then Jeff had the brilliant idea to find a knock-off recipe online. Oh, how I loved him that day.

One last craving story. I was watching my friend's kids while she went to the doctor and we were reading picture books. One of the books we read was about this boy who goes to the store with his mom and the doughnuts are on sale "buy one dozen- get a dinosaur free" the rest of the book is about the dinosaurs but all I could think about were glazed doughnuts. I couldn't stop thinking about them all night long, and by the next morning I had turned into this monster "MUST HAVE GLAZED DOUGHNUTS!!!!" so Jeff went with me to the grocery store to get some doughnuts. That is true love.